1802
January.
from it. With respect to the inner islands and the main coast, it was necessarily defective, from the French ships having sailed round the archipelago, and not through the middle of it as I did in the Investigator. Here, my survey, though far from complete in the details, will afford much new information; and useful also, since it has brought to light a well sheltered cove affording wood and water, and two other tolerable anchorages at which some refreshments may be procured, and at one, quantities of salt in the summer season.
(Atlas,
Plate III.)From the archipelago eastward, the examination of the coast was prosecuted by D'Entrecasteaux with much care, and with some trifling exceptions, very closely; but as far as the 127th degree of longitude from Greenwich, no soundings were given. These have been supplied, and a more minute description given of the coast. At the 129th degree, the French ships seem to have been closer in with the land than was the Investigator; and it would appear by the track that they were also closer at the 130th, and at the head of the Great Bight, but these last are not corroborated by the soundings. From thence to the bay in which we anchored on the 28th, the Dutch chart of 1627 was the sole authority; and making allowances for the state of navigation at that time, it is as correct in form as could reasonably have been expected.
The latitudes and longitudes of the points and islands along the coast have been either verified or corrected, for there are commonly some differences between my longitudes and those of Vancouver and D'Entrecasteaux. The observations by which certain places, taken as fixed points, are settled in longitude, are mentioned at those places, as also are the corrections applied to the time keepers for laying down the intermediate parts; and both are more particularly specified in the Appendix to this volume.
Monsieur Beautemps Beaupré, geographical engineer on board La Recherche, was the constructor of the French charts; and they must be allowed to do him great credit. Perhaps no chart of a coast so little known as this was, will bear a comparison with its